Eternal Devotion: Rebuilding Colorless Eldrazi Stompy

One of my favorite things about Modern: the power level is high enough to allow us to play with Lightning Bolt, but low enough for Standard sets to consistently impact the format. Eldritch Moon injected some welcome lifeblood into my pettest deck, Monkey Grow, with Bedlam Reveler. The set also gave a boost to another of my pet decks, Colorless Eldrazi Stompy.

As much as I love resolving Treasure Cruise-casting Tarmogoyfs, it was only a matter of time before I returned to my big, dumb Eldrazi buddies. How does that age-old adage go? Once you turn-two Thought-Knot, you never go back? Call it eternal devotion… to colorless, that is. Eternal Scourge gives Colorless Eldrazi Stompy something it desperately needed after the Eye of Ugin ban: a compelling reason to play turn-zero consistency tools Gemstone Caverns and Serum Powder.

While I have many notes on the tournaments and the deck, I doubt analysis this close would prove entertaining for an average Modern Nexus reader, or even particularly helpful for a burgeoning Monkey Grow player. If I’m mistaken, please let me know in the comments. In the meantime, we’ll take a look at my other recent project—Colorless Eldrazi Stompy—and leave the follow-up Monkey Grow article for when I have more concrete insights about Reveler and Traverse.

To the judges out there, how badly would you want to deck check this thing? You’d be done in sixty seconds! As usual, we’ll go over the deck’s core components and see what’s new with Colorless Eldrazi Stompy post-Eldritch Moon.

A Streamlined Threat Suite

Serum Powder rewards deckbuilders for constructing piles full of four-ofs. Colorless Eldrazi Stompy effortlessly fulfills this requirement. With four Relics, four Dismembers, four Mimics, and eight three-drops, the deck almost always has plays for the first couple turns of the game.

Casting spells early paves the way for Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher to turn slipping boards around. In this section, we’ll go over the less obvious creature inclusions.

Eldrazi Mimic: The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Eldrazi Mimic is a card I long forewent in Colorless Eldrazi Stompy, but doing so was a mistake perhaps even bigger than running Serum Powder in a deck with few ways to abuse it. Mimic fulfills a crucial role in this deck by pressuring linear strategies. He’s functionally Delver of Secrets in those matchups, coming down on turn one or two and hitting for three, four, five in the next few turns. Sometimes, the best counterspell for Ad Nauseam is simply not letting your opponent live long enough to cast it.

Granted, Mimic sucks against interactive decks. Eldrazi doesn’t love trading one-for-one, especially after brutalizing its own hand with a series of Temple-searching mulligans. It would rather grind out card advantage with Eternal Scourge or Matter Reshaper while impacting the board. In non-Burn Lightning Bolt matchups, Mimic gets the axe post-board for relevant interaction or the infinitely more durable Endbringer. Notably, this deck already has an edge over interactive strategies, so Mimic’s downfalls here aren’t deeply felt.

Mimic also looks less appealing in a deck with only four Sol lands. As an actual two-drop, he’s decidedly unexciting. The consistency bonus our manabase gets from Powder and Caverns, combined with our dedicated aggro gameplan, make it acceptable in my eyes.

Endless One: Endless Fun

Sure, Thought-Knot and Smasher get all the accolades. But Endless One is quietly one of the most important creatures in Colorless Eldrazi Stompy. Its strengths lie in helping us curve out beautifully.

Double-Temple hand full of four-mana threats? Slam a 2/2 Endless One on turn one. Removal-heavy opener versus an interactive deck? Play it as a 4/4. The game stalls out and it’s turn eight? Guess we’ll make an 8/8—or larger, Temples depending. Endless One is tremendously versatile.

Matter Reshaper: Killing Bolts Since ’15

Reshaper trades very favorably with any removal spell in Modern, but then again, so does Eternal Scourge. I do like that it cantrips after removing a Nacatl or Goblin Guide. Still, Reshaper is the worst creature in the deck. Whatever advantage it grants us in interactive matchups, we pay for with its lackluster performance against linear combo.

What About Scourge?

The newest addition to the deck deserves its own section. Without Eternal Scourge, this build of Colorless Eldrazi Stompy wouldn’t be possible—it would just be another bad Serum Powder deck from yours truly. Scourge adds a great deal of synergy and allows us to play consistency tools necessary to give us fast mana comparable to that of the Hierarch-toting Bant Eldrazi deck.

The Eldrazi Itself

Eternal Scourge is a fine Modern card in its own right. The Eldrazi decks of old combined Affinity’s explosive starts with the resiliency of a buffer aggro deck, but could still be grinded out by Jund’s removal-heavy Confidant draws or Blue Moon’s Snapcaster-powered stream of Roasts. Scourge makes it very difficult for interactive opponents to actually remove all our threats.

Bolt, Path, Terminate, and Abrupt Decay all turn into Unsummon when they target the Scourge, making the new Eldrazi a huge pain for anyone slinging removal spells. Even Nahiri can’t remove it permanently. The only way to get Scourge out of the picture is to kill it in combat, which doesn’t even work with a Relic online. That Relic and Scourge interaction gives us a recurring removal spell against x/3-heavy aggro decks like Zoo, and an endless chump blocker against vanilla monsters like Gurmag Angler and Tarmogoyf.

Exiling a hand with Serum Powder and Eternal Scourge doesn’t just give us a “free mulligan” to seven—it gives us a free mulligan to eight. With Scourge in the exile zone from Serum Powder, we can cast it as though it were in our hand, meaning our new opener functionally has more cards than our last one.

This interaction incentivizes us to mulligan very aggressively into Sol lands and Serum Powders. A four-carder with a pair of Scourges in exile is really a six-carder. And we got to see more than three hands along the way, greatly increasing our chance of opening Eldrazi Temple. If you consider a Sol land as counting for two cards, a four-carder with two Scourges in exile and a Temple in hand is in a certain sense a seven-carder—and our Temple lets us jump the opponent in mana production too!

A final note on Serum Powder: having six mainboard colorless sources under Blood Moon gives us a big edge over Bant Eldrazi in fighting the enchantment.

Play and Draw with Gemstone Caverns

We don’t even have to open Temple to benefit from a fast-mana effect. Gemstone Caverns provides another way to start the game ahead on mana.

The card’s major drawback—exiling a card from our hand—exists to make the card more fair. If we’re going to functionally be on the play by starting the game ahead of our opponent on lands, we need to give up the only advantage to being on the draw: getting that first turn draw. Our on-the-play opponent doesn’t get to draw for turn when we start the game with Caverns in play, so it makes sense that we would give up a card to play it.

Eternal Scourge in the opener negates this drawback, since exiling it to Caverns is the same as not exiling a card at all. (It’s actually even better, because then opponents can’t move Eternal Scourge to the graveyard with an Inquisition of Kozilek.) That means we get to be on the play in games we should be on the draw with no drawback at all. In fact, we’re given an advantage, as our opponent doesn’t get to draw on their turn!

It’s true that we won’t always open Caverns and Scourge together. But the odds of us opening either Temple + land + threats, Caverns + lands + Scourge, or any combination of lackluster cards + Powder are so high that we can frequently mulligan into exquisitely competent hands. The Caverns + Scourge interaction just gives us another combination that turns decent hands into great ones.

We would play four Caverns in a flash if they weren’t legendary. At three, I rarely have a problem with clunky multiples.

My testing with the snotty Ape also didn’t convince me of his applications outside of powering out Chalice. We have enough ways to find fast-mana hands without him, and rarely want to lose more cards after mulliganing so much. Guide also clunks up our openers and makes mulligan decisions much harder. We don’t want eight nonland mana-producers in a deck so focused on powering out threats and disruption.

Remember Dismember

Another reason we can’t play Guide and Chalice is we’d have to cut down on Dismembers. I tried playing 0-3 of this card and always found myself wanting more. It’s Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile rolled into one, and for a drawback that isn’t even relevant in many games. When Sol lands enable you to out-aggro almost any opponent, four life is a more-than-acceptable price to pay for such an insane effect.

Relic is a huge pain for Tarmogoyf and Snapaster Mage decks alike. It does significantly less work in our linear matchups, generally switching out for Chalice post-board. It still has some relevance against Infect, where it powers down or shuts off Become Immense. And man, do four Relics hurt Dredge. Between mainboard graveyard hate and our fast aggressive starts, I’ve found that matchup unloseable.

It’s possible that another card should be played in this slot. I do like that Relic can be cycled away when it’s dead, unlike other hate cards. Another bullet on my to-test list is splitting the Matter Reshapers with a pair of Blight Herders to further benefit from the mainboard Relics.

Notes on the Manabase

One big benefit of going colorless is not having to worry about mana. We can just play enough lands and be good to go. Here are some notes on the lands I’ve chosen to include:

4 Ghost Quarter: This card is nuts in Colorless Eldrazi Stompy. Quarter does wonders for keeping Tron decks off their mana while we stomp them, and harasses three-color decks trying to fetch around their own Blood Moons. It’s also good for cutting opponents off red before putting them on a short clock with unkillable Blinkmoth Nexi.

2 Mutavault: A more aggressive Blinkmoth (no, it’s really a Blinkmoth!). I wish we could play more of these, but the other utility lands are too important.

2 Cavern of Souls: The main reason not to max out on Vaults. Mana Leak can spell trouble for this deck in some cases, and Cavern addresses that weakness without even costing a card. It’s especially satisfying to sandbag the Cavern until blue opponents leave up their counterspell mana.

2 Sea Gate Wreckage: I like a pair of these in a four-Powder deck. We almost always see one in longer games, which is when the Wreckage shines. Works well with late-game Powders and makes it difficult for grindy opponents to stabilize.

1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: It doesn’t hurt to have one Urborg, since the upside can be so radical in some matchups. Not having to pay life for Dismember makes the Phyrexian removal spell even sillier.

The Old Scourge of the Format

Few Modern decks were ever as hated as Colorless Eldrazi Stompy. Even the ostensibly superior UW Eldrazi deck that came to dominate the format didn’t inspire the rage of the mythical turn-one Chalice deck that dominated Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch. But some players have always wanted to play such a strategy in Modern. I’m sure I don’t speak just for myself when I say I love casting Thought-Knot Seer and hate tapping Brushland. Eternal Scourge might be the card we’ve been waiting for.

Jordan is the copy and content editor at Modern Nexus. He has played Magic since 2003, and Modern since its inception. Jordan favors card efficiency over raw power and specializes in disruptive aggro strategies, always bringing tuned brews to events.

Round 1 loss vs. Jeskai Thing (Shoaled his Looting on the draw when he led with Mountain, thinking he was on Dredge; cost me the game because I could have Shoaled Pyro Ascension had I waited. Threw Game 3 to a Dispel I could have played around)
Round 2 win vs. Kiki-Chord (Chord matchups are very good)
Round 3 win vs. Abzan Chord
Round 4 win vs. Kiki-Chord
Round 5 loss vs. Grixis Control (he gets under me with Tasigur in both games; I win the next three games we play with Traverse/Reveler. This MU seems very good)

Second PPTQ; 3-2:

Round 1 loss vs. Kiki-Chord (he goes off and I have no removal in Game 1. I lose Game 3 with a moon down as I shoot his dorks, knowing he has Evolution in hand and Wall of Omens in play as I beat with a Goyf and a Delver; he topdecks Pridemage and blows up my moon. I have Serum and Probe in hand and mistakenly don’t crack my Foothills and go down to 3 life to get Breeding Pool tapped on his end step, although I consider it. I untap and Serum, drawing Scour and scrying Serum-Probe to the top. Then I Scour my opponent to draw the Serum, looking for Denial. I find one and bottom a land. I can Probe into the Denial here and go to 2, but I don’t have any blue sources left and will have to fetch-shock with my Wooded Foothills to actually cast the Denial. I have lethal damage next turn but can’t make blue for my opponent’s turn and he Evolutions the Wall into Pia and Kiran to kill me)
Round 2 win vs. Mono-Red Storm (this match is done in 8 minutes and I have time to scout the room)
Round 3 win vs. Naya Collected Zoo (I accidentally bring in Blood Moon after making a mental note not to, and resolve it. Game 2 I have two Revelers and a Goyf in play to his two Smiters and a Nacatl. He resolves a third Smiter, I draw Bolt and pass back. I’m at 1 life and he’s at 22. He attacks; I block each Smiter and Bolt the cat to wipe his board. Then a couple of big attacks prowess-fueled by Traverse into the third Reveler seals the game. He had a Moon in hand, too!)
Round 4 loss vs. Merfolk (Revelers are clunky here; miss Huntmaster. Game 3 sees me draw four Goyfs and get tempo’d out by three Tidebinder Mages. I have a State and a Revelery in hand and would have had lethal if he’d played an artifact or enchantment)
Round 5 win vs. Burn (close one, missing Huntmaster here as well)

Overall the deck felt really strong but I caught myself slipping multiple times. I think I need more practice with the transformational sideboard. Traverse/Bedlam was great the whole weekend though. It just trashes fair decks like Chord and URx.

Notes on the deck: I don’t know if we need the third Reveler. Two is always enough to steal the game vs. interactive decks and value decks alike. I’m just worried about Thoughtseize taking one. 4 Traverse might also be too many. I really want to find room for Roast in the SB.

Not trying to be a jerk but I thought the issues with the Monkey Grow list were pretty obvious. Delver and Reveler ask you to conform your deck as much as possible to two specific card types. Goyf and Traverse ask you to diversify your card types as much as possible. Every card changed to strengthen one set statistically weakens the other set. Then we have a playset of Hooting Mandrills that nonbo’s with everyone but Delver. I think Temur Traverse is a deck. I think Monkey Grow is a deck. But that build, slamming the two together, is just too much going on.

I mentioned that Mandrills nonbo’s with everyone but Delver. That still includes Goyf and Snapper. Regardless you are replying to a smaller secondary point of my comment rather than the three main points that precede it.

Well, there’s plenty of evidence already available that disproves those “main points.” Take a look at Immanuel Gerschenson’s winning deck from GP Madrid in 2014—he took a UR Cruise Delver shell, dropped in 4 Goyfs, and won the tournament. No small feat! Pre-Kalitas, Jund decks were playing Tasigur, as well. And Grixis plays a full set of Snapcaster Mage alongside their suite of Delver fatties (we only play one).

I’ve been hearing people say that Goyf and delve nonbo, and that delve and Snap nonbo, sine KTK came to Modern. But it’s just not really true. You don’t need to take my word for it. Existing decks and their hard results (see: mtgtop8) indicate that Goyf, Snapcaster, and delve actually work fine together.

I agree with you for the most part, Jordan. My own work with Temur has indicated that while Delver, Snapcaster, Goyf, and Reveler can cohabitate in these colors easily, it takes real work to get Traverse to work in this shell as well. And on top of that you’re shell wants to run Disrupting shoal, which imposes a U centric color designation requirement for most of your deck. U doesn’t have a Modern-playable tribal spell, which I think would do wonders for putting this shell together for you. I think you may be seeing all the opportunity without paying enough attention to the costs, specifically in relation to Traverse.

Delirium likely can work in Modern, there have been many ideas about it going around. But as the above commentator stated, putting reliable delirium into a shell that requires you to run 26+ instants/sorceries seems like a recipe for at best an unproductive mishmash in the maindeck, or a difficult to use transformative sideboard that doesn’t leave you enough space to include relevant silver Traverse bullets and fails to answer all the deck’s weaknesses.

To Tanner:
While the BG/x Turn 1 IoK Turn 2 Goyf Turn 3 LotV shell is tried and true in this format, that dedicates a lot of slots to making Goyf its most powerful. Not every deck needs to do that to play goyf effectively, because we have other ways to interact with our opponents. Goyf isn’t reliant on only your GY, so I don’t think it’s easy to argue that Goyf requires card disparity in your own maindeck.

Snapcaster fills a similar role. Yes, it does exile a single instant/sorcery from your yard, which may make Reveler use more mana than simply RR to cast. But both Snap and Goyf are strong cases for the inverse of the argument I make against using Traverse in this shell–the cost to running each is very small in relation to the power the two cards provide you, enough so that running both in these colors and in this shell is correct.

I have to say that as someone who is a devoted RUG/RG/UG player, your articles on temur/gruul/izzet decks are the most interesting (to me). As someone who also loves playing Temur Grow, Id love to see where the deck failed, as I plan on going back to it soon enough. Keep it up, either way.

Once again, this really isn’t the place for serum powder.
Despite any tempting interactions and marginal synergies, you don’t want this card anywhere near a deck which aims to out-creature and overwhelm an opponent in short order.
You aren’t concerned with crafting the perfect “combo” hand like other decks which have abused powder in the past (and those are few, because the card has some major downsides)

Consider whether your ability to win a game relies on your ability to topdeck into enough threats/action, and whether drawing a 3-cost mana rock impedes that ability.

It’s easy to see why you feel the need to include the card, but really you would be better served by simply having more gas, more action, in the deck.

Chalice of the Void is still good, by the way. With simian spirit guide obviously. The rise of deaths shadow and dredge (with affinity and infect very well positioned) help chalice to have real impact against the competitive field.

And Simian spirit guide helps you get those turn 2 thought knot seers more profitably than serum powder does, while also giving you some interesting ways to use fast mana to either catch opponents out or simply play your reality smashers a turn earlier.

Not to Diss your deck, I really like it, and i love that you are revisiting one of my favourite archetypes. But man, lay off the powder. It does you no good besides cute interactions.

We already talked about this topic in another article you posted Jordan.

Here are my thought’s on Eldrazi Stompy/Aggro in Modern:

There’s basically three ways to aproach the archetype(at least the three ways i aproach Eldrazi):

-There’s the Aggro version, which is trying to constantly put pressure on the opponent, and has god-like hands like turn 2 Thought-Knot Seer. This deck is very powerful because it can win it’s bad matchups by racing very hard. This is Bant Eldrazi. The upside of having a “3” Color mana base AND playing white is that your SB is nothing short of strong in hate cards and versatility.

-There’s Ramp version: This is RG Eldrazi. No Turn 2 TKS but Kozilek’s Return and Lightining Bolt go a long way in your bad matchups.

– Then there’s Colorless Eldrazi Stompy: This version is the most unexplored so far. If you look closely, the other versions are very strong because they have something in particular that defines them. Bant has Turn 2 TKS and white for backup, RG has..well it plays red, Bolt defines the format and Return just wrecks go-wide strategies like Affinity, Elves, Merfolk,etc.
I still think that Colorless just has to abuse Chalice on turn 1 to have a shot against Modern’s Tier 1 Aggro/Combo decks. It’s a stupidily powerful play, and wrecks other decks that aren’t combo or aggro, like Jeskai. I reached the conclusion that if you don’t target explosiveness or versatility, you aren’t doing anything good in Modern. I have won many matches with Colorless Eldrazi that i wouldn’t had a shot if i hadn’t played Chalice of the Void.

I pretty much agree with your points though. One thing this deck has over Bant and Ramp is that it can grind with Eternal Scourge and Sea Gate Wreckage, and it’s a lot faster than either Bant or Ramp when it comes to explosive starts. Mimic helps with these, but really it has to do with Powder and Caverns I think. I’ve run into the Bant deck 6 times online so far and have only dropped one match to them because I just hit my Temples more.

I have been testing a Chalice + Simian version instead of a Reshaper + Relic one since this article was published, and it’s been really good. The one beef I have with it is Chalice’s interaction with Scourge. Scourge turns Bolt and Path into Unsummons even with a Chalice out, which is really annoying. I don’t like giving opponents a use for their one-drops after resolving Chalice. But yeah, that mostly comes up in the interactive matchups that Scourge + Chalice should destroy anyway.

Well I just spent a couple of hours fiddling with some code and came up with a mulligan simulator . Some results to gauge the effect of Serum Powder:

Total simulations: 100000
On the play. Mulligan up to 5. Chalice of the Void instead of Serum Powder.
Keepable hand criteria: has at least 1 Eldrazi Temple AND has at least 2 creatures AND has no more than 4 lands.
Keepable 7: 30176 (30.18% of all)
Including with Eternal Scourge in exile: 0 (0.00% of all) (0.00% of group)
Keepable 6: 17072 (17.07% of all)
Including with Eternal Scourge in exile: 0 (0.00% of all) (0.00% of group)
Keepable 5: 8739 (8.74% of all)
Including with Eternal Scourge in exile: 0 (0.00% of all) (0.00% of group)

Total simulations: 100000
On the play. Mulligan up to 5. With Serum Powder.
Keepable hand criteria: has at least 1 Eldrazi Temple AND has at least 2 creatures AND has no more than 4 lands.
Keepable 7: 42640 (42.64% of all)
Including with Eternal Scourge in exile: 5217 (5.22% of all) (12.23% of group)
Keepable 6: 19596 (19.60% of all)
Including with Eternal Scourge in exile: 4138 (4.14% of all) (21.12% of group)
Keepable 5: 8731 (8.73% of all)
Including with Eternal Scourge in exile: 2326 (2.33% of all) (26.64% of group)

Ha, love this and will give it a shot. I have been wondering how best to make use of Caverns, Serum Powder, and Scourge but was stuck trying to make a Rest in Peace build the I could never get to come together.

Question: how do you like All is Dust? Seems really slow, especially without Spirit Guides.

Your list looks great except my instinct tells me those powders should be matter reshapers. I can’t get behind serum powder in what is essentially an aggro/stompy deck. If you even topdeck a powder once, that’s a creature you don’t have, but should. Modern is a removal heavy format so you really need to rely on drawing threat after threat. Reshapers even helps you achieve this by drawing or flipping straight into cards such as lands for ramp. It’s really a crucial card.

Otherwise, looks solid. I’d consider a single endbringer maindeck but that’s down to preference.

How are you finding the scourges? Is the 3/3 body enough? I was worried they were a bit slow but I like the idea of the inevitability that they bring. A few in-game examples would be nice :).

Would love a second article on this deck with your updates and maybe a short simple report with some key plays and interactions you noticed, specifically focusing on the unusual cards you’ve chosen (scourge mostly). But really though for it to carry any weight, I think powder needs to go again. I mean call me crazy but even Adaptive Automaton would probably be better than powder in terms of “this actually wins me games by being in the deck”, and that’s the kind of card usually reserved for decks like allies.

Scourge and Powder work together to help us open Temples before the game starts without hurting our hand size too much. Scourge’s inevitability has been great against the removal-heavy decks you mentioned in your post. I initially started with 4 Reshapers and eventually cut them because those extra bodies just weren’t necessary.

Current metagame: 12/1 – 12/31

NOTE: Metagame % is calculated from the unweighted average of all MTGO leagues, paper T8s/T16s, and GP/PT/Open Day 2s in the date range. Data is tracked in the Top Decks page, which you can browse for more details.